Recording of Elizabeth Bishop reading “Filling Station”
A sea of seated pilgrims,
clad in somber overcoats
and hats, long only for
some consequence.
Between, even within, lines
the lector sojourns in a hull
of her own locution, dutifully endures
- and more than once -
that someone’s antiphonal cough
like the slap of an errant breaker;
in its wake, the hush prickles
with static until she resumes.
A surging laugh after
“Someone waters the plant, or oils it maybe” –
and the swell smoothes her voice
over a chuckle to tie off the rhythm
gently,
underhanded, “so,
so,
so,” guiding each stitch’s s
around the next
until it is sound.
Marina Read Weiss has work forthcoming in Boston Review, Circus, and Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and has received the Academy of American Poets’ University Prize and a Fulbright grant. She read poetry for Dominic Luxford at The Believer, and she had the good fortune of working with Terrance Hayes, Daniel Hall, and the late Craig Arnold.
